Principal Software Engineer- Contractor

This role is a contract assignment at Palo Alto Networks. Contractors will not be employed by Palo Alto Networks but through our trusted staffing partners.

Location : Bengaluru, India (Hybrid)
Duration: 12 Months
Job Title: Principal Software Engineer (Contractor)

Job Description

Duties

At Palo Alto Networks everything starts and ends with our mission: Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we are looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Your Impact

This position calls for someone who possesses a good Software Engineering background and works proactively to drive results. This person is a self-starter, flexible, has a high level of integrity and is action and goal-oriented in a fast-paced, team-oriented, collaborative environment.

Feature Development & Customer Enhancement Delivery — Design, implement, and deliver new features and customer-driven enhancement requests on the OPP platform using Python and Go lang, building new API endpoints and business logic.
Enhancing the Python CDK8s Kubernetes manifest generation and helm charts maintenance for and developing new Ansible roles for VM provisioning and cluster lifecycle management, and building
Customer Issue Resolution & Root Cause Analysis — Serve as the primary engineering escalation point for customer-reported Jira tickets. Investigate customer issues incidents across the full OPP stack — from the NGINX Ingress and Hydra API Gateway through the App Proxy authentication layer, and the Python-based API services — to the underlying data stores (MySQL, Elasticsearch, Redis, RabbitMQ, MinIO) and Rook Ceph storage infrastructure. Perform deep-dive root cause analysis using structured log analysis across OPP service components, produce formal RCA reports, and deliver permanent fixes that prevent recurrence.

Your Experience

10+ years of overall software engineering experience, including 3+ years of progressive experience with a heavy focus on developing cloud-native applications at scale.
3+ years of experience with deployment tools (such as Ansible, SaltStack, .. etc), particularly for system deployment, upgrades, and cluster-node orchestration.
Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills — a proven track record of root-causing production issues, and a can-do attitude when faced with complex, ambiguous problems.
Solid working knowledge of Kubernetes (pods, deployments, namespaces, PVCs, log inspection, and troubleshooting), and hands-on experience with Docker / containers.
Excellent communication and cross-team collaboration skills.
Strong proficiency in Go and Python with hands-on experience building production microservices and backend APIs in both languages
Hands-on experience with Ansible for infrastructure automation, VM provisioning, and configuration management in air-gapped or on-premises deployment environments
Deep practical experience in distributed-systems architecture and microservices.
Proven ability to build and deliver high-volume services, leveraging technologies such as Elasticsearch, Pub/Sub, REST APIs, and serverless computing.
A strong understanding of public-cloud design considerations (security, networking, and load balancing) and the constraints of building services at global scale.

Nice to Have:

Direct experience maintaining or sustaining self-hosted enterprise software within customer environments.
Technical proficiency with infrastructure-stack components such as Elasticsearch, Redis, RabbitMQ, NGINX, and S3-compatible storage.
A professional background in sustaining engineering or technical support, focused on resolving complex customer escalations